Through My P.O. Box

It’s a little bit late, but here is that picture I promised of mailart that has come to me through my P.O. Box recently. This picture does not do it justice at all. Each individual piece has so much character and attention to detail. You can view it larger here.

I have two pieces that I want to share pictures of their own.

This is a mailart diorama piece from Rhya in Canada. I had just discovered Rhya and her amazing work through fellow mailart blogger Jessica Gowling. Rhya and Jessica send each other mailart with missions and I just love that. Rhya makes these amazing, beautiful and detailed little dioramas with her illustrated characters. I thought about messaging Rhya to see if she would interested in trading mailart, but then I got intimidated so I didn’t message her. But, wouldn’t you know it? A couple days later I got an email from her asking if I’d like to do a mailart trade. I was thrilled. I had just started following her blog, but I didn’t want to ruin the surprise so I stopped updating in case she showed the piece she sent me. Even after it arrived I didn’t open it right away because I wanted to save it as an incentive for when I got caught up on my outgoing mailart.

There are so many little tiny parts to the diorama and while I was positioning the parts I got swept away in the fun. Afterwards I realized it reminded me of when I was a kid and would play with my Smurfs Colorforms. When I finally went to Rhya’s blog to catch up I found a post about this piece she sent me, and you can read it here. Apparently, each raccoon is based on one of her hometown friends. In the picture above you can see some little characters (bottom left) and they have this breathtakingly detailed and subtle watercolor on them. When I was playing with it, I thought of them as rock friends, but after looking at her blog, I saw some similar shaped characters in a different diorama and she referred to them as spirits. I loved that and think maybe my little guys are rock/ghosties.

I loved this package and had so much fun with it.Thank you Rhya!

I want to share one more package that I got recently. It wasn’t necessarily mailart, because I purchased part of it, but when my order arrived it was filled with so much more than just the postcard I bought. I’ve been admiring Oly’s work on flickr for years now. Her work is so unique and very stylized.

Oly posted to her flickr that she was selling postcards in her online shop and so I went to her shop and bought one. After I bought the postcard she messaged me letting me know that she likes to take her time and put together special packages with each order and that was fine by me. The package arrived earlier this week and opening it up was such a treat. It brought me back to when I was in middle school and had a pen pal from Japan. While I would send a letter to my penpal, she would reply back with very little writing, but with a package just filled with all sorts of presents, each part individually wrapped. That was exactly how this order from Oly was.

That penpal experience left an important impression on me in everything from my love of mail, and mailart, to the way I package things for my Etsy store as well as my Artomat pieces. I always want whatever I send out to give the recipient a memorable experience.  This order from Oly reminded me that not only are all the little extras important but the presentation is just as important. Wrapping each item causes some excited anticipation while opening piece after piece, and while I’m not sure if I have enough time to wrap tons of tiny pieces for each outgoing etsy order, it does make me want to rethink my clear plastic cello bags that go out with every order.